High Coronary Calcium Score: How do others feel emotionally?

Hello @mark430,

Living in an age of information-overload, it is so difficult to determine what is safe or real and what is not! I’m not a medical professional and cannot offer medical advice, but as a moderator on Connect I would be remiss if I did not share my concerns about chelation therapy. While there is a legitimate medical use for chelation therapy – as treatment for toxic metal poisoning – it has gained notoriety as a treatment for many other conditions like heart disease, atherosclerosis.

According to Mayo Clinic, "The safety and effectiveness of chelation therapy for heart disease can't be determined, even after a large-scale study was conducted to determine just that. Results of TACT didn't provide enough evidence to support routine use of chelation therapy for heart disease.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease/expert-answers/chelation-therapy/faq-20157449

Some important, but overlooked facts from The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health div. of NIH (one of the sponsors of TACT) https://nccih.nih.gov/health/chelation

– Overall, TACT showed that chelation therapy produced only modest reduction in cardiovascular events. However, further examination of the data showed that therapy benefitted only those patients with diabetes. There was no significant benefit of EDTA treatment in participants who didn’t have diabetes.
– Among the patients receiving chelation, 26% went on to have a cardiovascular event, such as death, heart attack or stroke.
– 16% of those receiving chelation and 15% who were receiving the placebo stopped their infusions because of an adverse event. Four of those events were serious; 2 were in the chelation group (1 death) and 2 were in the placebo group (1 death).
– Dept. of Health and Human Services cited several concerns about the study, including that the researchers hadn't followed the rules.
– In 2006, the CDC reported that two children and one adult had died after receiving chelation. They all developed dangerously low calcium levels, which can cause the heart to stop beating.

At the risk of inundating you with more reading, I think this journal article might also interest you:
– Why the NIH Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) Should Be Abandoned https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2438277/

In the constant search for "living our best life” or following popular (often misleading) trends like "natural equals safe,” I myself have given in to the temptations of anecdotal evidence (oh the joys of non-diet related weight loss supplements:) – rather than waiting for tedious, sometimes inconclusive, but often factually correct clinical evidence. So when considering complementary or alternative treatments, it is best to be be open-minded yet skeptical–making treatment decisions based on poor-quality scientific data can be dangerous, especially when it concerns heart disease.

@mark430, I will continue to research this topic to provide resources, and I’m so glad to read that you will consult your cardiologist about chelation. I’m tagging Mentors @hopeful33250 and @predictable and fellow members @thankful @mdemoI @surf362 , and look forward to hearing more from you.

Hello @mark430,

Living in an age of information-overload, it is so difficult to determine what is safe or real and what is not! I’m not a medical professional and cannot offer medical advice, but as a moderator on Connect I would be remiss if I did not share my concerns about chelation therapy. While there is a legitimate medical use for chelation therapy – as treatment for toxic metal poisoning – it has gained notoriety as a treatment for many other conditions like heart disease, atherosclerosis.

According to Mayo Clinic, "The safety and effectiveness of chelation therapy for heart disease can't be determined, even after a large-scale study was conducted to determine just that. Results of TACT didn't provide enough evidence to support routine use of chelation therapy for heart disease.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease/expert-answers/chelation-therapy/faq-20157449

Some important, but overlooked facts from The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health div. of NIH (one of the sponsors of TACT) https://nccih.nih.gov/health/chelation

– Overall, TACT showed that chelation therapy produced only modest reduction in cardiovascular events. However, further examination of the data showed that therapy benefitted only those patients with diabetes. There was no significant benefit of EDTA treatment in participants who didn’t have diabetes.
– Among the patients receiving chelation, 26% went on to have a cardiovascular event, such as death, heart attack or stroke.
– 16% of those receiving chelation and 15% who were receiving the placebo stopped their infusions because of an adverse event. Four of those events were serious; 2 were in the chelation group (1 death) and 2 were in the placebo group (1 death).
– Dept. of Health and Human Services cited several concerns about the study, including that the researchers hadn't followed the rules.
– In 2006, the CDC reported that two children and one adult had died after receiving chelation. They all developed dangerously low calcium levels, which can cause the heart to stop beating.

At the risk of inundating you with more reading, I think this journal article might also interest you:
– Why the NIH Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) Should Be Abandoned https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2438277/

In the constant search for "living our best life” or following popular (often misleading) trends like "natural equals safe,” I myself have given in to the temptations of anecdotal evidence (oh the joys of non-diet related weight loss supplements:) – rather than waiting for tedious, sometimes inconclusive, but often factually correct clinical evidence. So when considering complementary or alternative treatments, it is best to be be open-minded yet skeptical–making treatment decisions based on poor-quality scientific data can be dangerous, especially when it concerns heart disease.

@mark430, I will continue to research this topic to provide resources, and I’m so glad to read that you will consult your cardiologist about chelation. I’m tagging Mentors @hopeful33250 and @predictable and fellow members @thankful @mdemoI @surf362 , and look forward to hearing more from you.

Kanaaz Pereira, thank you VERY much for your quality reply to my concerns. It is certainly comforting to have others like yourself helping people stay healthy. Clearly, I have more reading and thinking to do. Regarding chelation and the TACT study, I do see flawed, but apparently good results for those with diabetes. Those results, if accurate may indicate hope for me, as I have been borderline diabetic for quite some time (possibly a side effect of years of statin therapy). To continue increasing my CAC score as time goes by will not end well for me and I am hoping to find some way to reverse it. Exercise and diet may slow it down. Vitamin K2 may or may not help. Catheterization indicates that the lumens in my coronary arteries are clear, so bypass surgery in order to avoid sudden death does not seem to be an option (please let me know if I am wrong about that).

I want to thank Bluesdoc for his willingness to share results of his chelation experience. I, like him, am hoping to reverse my high CAC score. My further hope would be that this reversal, in turn, would reduce the danger of a sudden CVA or an MI.

I live in South Florida, but maybe it would be helpful for me to see someone in the Mayo Clinic who could help through medication and/or surgical intervention. I am under the care of a well trained cardiologist, but she may not have access to many of the tools that Mayo has to offer. Does anyone have thoughts on that possibility?

OK.. so a Calcium score of 2316 and then I wrote kind of a goodbye note to my wife not intending her to see it. Anyway, just got back from hiking in the mountains of Crested Butte in Colorado where the mountains are steep and the trails are rugged. I just came from sea level in NYC to upwards of 11,000 feet and my heart was beating like a madman. Yet I did the hikes with no symptoms. So what the heck are we gonna do - wait for that piece of plaque to break off and kill us? Hell with that nonsense. These high scores indicate that plaque was building up over many many years not the fresh or loose plaque that will tend to be unstable. I've doubled the number of days I go to the gym and doubled the intensity of the workouts I do. That feels great. But I have no idea if something is lurking in the background waiting to bring me down to earth. But I'm gonna continue what I've been doing - and have even stopped the baby aspirin. What's with cardiologists? as soon as you get some kind of score or indication their answer is always: statin and baby aspirin. I started a regimen of holistic or herbal things and will continue doing that. Fact is the cardio docs only know what they know. They have ZERO idea of anything else that could be of help because they just don't study anything else. I will continue to see my cardio doc and continue on this regimen and for sure continue to work my butt off in the gym. For a while all I could think of is this one thing I read: 'if your score is over 1000 you have a 25% chance of having an event in the next year'. To that I say Screw You. That;s no way to live this precious life wondering about that.

Kanaaz Pereira, thank you VERY much for your quality reply to my concerns. It is certainly comforting to have others like yourself helping people stay healthy. Clearly, I have more reading and thinking to do. Regarding chelation and the TACT study, I do see flawed, but apparently good results for those with diabetes. Those results, if accurate may indicate hope for me, as I have been borderline diabetic for quite some time (possibly a side effect of years of statin therapy). To continue increasing my CAC score as time goes by will not end well for me and I am hoping to find some way to reverse it. Exercise and diet may slow it down. Vitamin K2 may or may not help. Catheterization indicates that the lumens in my coronary arteries are clear, so bypass surgery in order to avoid sudden death does not seem to be an option (please let me know if I am wrong about that).

I want to thank Bluesdoc for his willingness to share results of his chelation experience. I, like him, am hoping to reverse my high CAC score. My further hope would be that this reversal, in turn, would reduce the danger of a sudden CVA or an MI.

I live in South Florida, but maybe it would be helpful for me to see someone in the Mayo Clinic who could help through medication and/or surgical intervention. I am under the care of a well trained cardiologist, but she may not have access to many of the tools that Mayo has to offer. Does anyone have thoughts on that possibility?